Featured photo by Dan Dry
There are times in our lives when the creeping sensation of eras coming to their end colors everything. These times can be sepia-hued and melancholy, but of course closed doors usually are accompanied by new opportunities, so it’s forever important to remain open to fresh possibilities.
So it was that the most recent time I ran into David Danielson was in late February at John Carlos White’s visitation. Previously I’d purchased a book as a gift to Danielson: Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit, by Josh Noel.
Edibles & Potables: “Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit,” a book by Josh Noel
When I mentioned the book to John Carlos at some point in 2025, he offered to hand-deliver it to Danielson, seeing as they were pals.
POKER PLAYER: “Uh, is this a game of chance?”
W.C. FIELDS: “Not the way I play it, no.”
But why a book about Malört? Well, I knew that Danielson hailed from Chicago, and something the chef told me when I interviewed him for a feature article in 2024 (below) stayed securely lodged in my cranium.
“I grew up in Chicago in a Scandinavian family, and holidays really were my first and most important food memories, going to the Swedish bakeries and marketplaces. There’s a neighborhood in Chicago called Andersonville, where we always shopped.”
It happens that Malört is connected with the same neighborhood in the person of Carl Jeppson, who originally devised the bitter spirit during Prohibition as a “tonic” for stomach problems.
The cursory history has been told and retold: A Swedish immigrant peddled Malört in Chicago in the early 20th century before selling it to a local businessman. The businessman had it for decades. He died in 1999 and left the brand to his secretary.
The point to this digression, which emerged while chatting again with Danielson at the funeral home, is that John Carlos never got around to delivering the book. However, now that Danielson is returning to Chicago, it all seems moot.
Dreamweaver Hotels Announces New Culinary Leadership at Hotel EMC2 and...Read more
